Coming in 2005: The Da Vinci Code Cruise
(From Israel to Merovingian France, Natch)

Last summer, the Guardian noted that tourism was up at a Scottish chapel mentioned in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, and the NYT spotted fans at the Louvre. Well, the Guardian correspondent in Rome, Sophie Arie, says Brown's Illuminati-themed novel Angels and Demons has inspired additional foot traffic. And with this sentence, she becomes my hero:

"The thriller also involves a psychopathic Middle Eastern murderer, signs hidden in sculptures by the sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Vatican Swiss guards with yellow tights and walkie-talkies, obscenely murdered naked cardinals, a pope who hasfathered a test tube baby and an American who falls out of the sky and survives."